


Life in Technicolor

by burnintoash (funnymorning)



Category: Winner (Band)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-10
Updated: 2015-12-10
Packaged: 2018-05-05 22:46:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5393075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/funnymorning/pseuds/burnintoash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chromesthesia - A condition in which another sensation, such as sound or smell, is stimulated by the perception of color.</p><p>Seungyoon-focused.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Life in Technicolor

_Chromesthesia: A condition in which another sensation, such as sound or smell, is stimulated by the perception of color._

Seungyoon’s life has always been in technicolor. At first, he didn’t know that it was not supposed to be this way. He didn’t realize that you are not supposed to associate mom’s laughter with bright yellow – the color of the crayon he always used to color the sun on his worksheets. He didn’t know that not everyone sees the strings of pink and bright blue and green and sometimes grey flowing down from the TV speakers whenever their class is lucky enough to be shown a Disney film as a reward for behaving. He didn’t know that people – well, normal people – do not speak both words and colors like he had always seen.

He didn’t know any of that until his teacher got suspicious after too many times of Seungyoon telling her that he didn’t like a class mate because her cries are the ugly shades of blue that he hated or can you please recite that poem again because the tangled pearls of purple and bright red weaved from the words were amazing and he would love to see them again.

Mom took him to several private clinics – almost all of whom gave the same diagnosis: active child imagination. It is common, the doctors in white coat with brown or sometimes green voices said, for children his age to be overly imaginative and talk about things like these. Mom almost broke her back paying for all of the expensive clinic trips until she finally found a doctor with an accurate diagnosis when Seungyoon was about to turn 7. 

Synesthesia.

Seungyoon remembers mom saying that weird English word like a curse. The doctor lady said he’d be fine – there is no cure and there is no treatment, but he will be fine as long as he can adjust to the outside world. It is a condition, not a disease. 

Mom said it is like being a superhero – he has something special that other people do not have. And it was fun thinking like that for a while, until Seungyoon realized that saying things like how the school bell sounds red or how the traffic sometimes confuse him because there are too many colors around for him to process, in the middle of the school playground could get him beaten up by kids who are sniffing out the weird outsiders they can vent their pre-puberty frustration on. 

So, Seungyoon wised up and never uttered a word about his technicolor life to anyone anymore.

*

When he was 12, Seungyoon picked up his first guitar. Music has always been something of a mystical land for him – when he was younger, he used to get scared at louder songs: the too vibrant colors shocking his vision and sometimes even getting him too distracted, but they eventually became familiar to him in a weirdly soothing way. 

The low tone of bass is always deep blue, the drums are red, sometimes orange-ish, the guitar gives a rainbow of nested colors, and so does the piano.

When he plucked the first string on his uncle’s run-down guitar that hadn’t been keyed properly for a long time, the small green huff of smoke-like texture that it produced kept him enticed, and he kept plucking at various strings until his fingers start to hurt a little and he is going almost cross-eyed from all the colors intertwining in front of his eyes. It is nothing like listening to music – well, it is a little, but god, the colors that come out of him and dance around him – they are something else entirely and he knew at that moment that this is what he wants to be doing for the rest of his life. 

*

Mom has always been golden to him. And he doesn’t mean it as a metaphor. She is, literally, golden. Her laughs always come with strings and strings of bright yellow. The high pitched voice she used to scold at him when he is being particularly stubborn is the kind of dark gold mixed with brown hues. And her cries, when she is careless enough for Seungyoon to catch them, are the worst kind of dirty yellow, like the stain on a shirt that hasn’t been washed for weeks. 

Sometimes, her laughs are mixed with blues, especially when she is trying to convince Seungyoon that no, their debt is not going to cripple them and they don’t need to move to an even smaller apartment or cut back his guitar lessons. Or when she asked Seungyoon if he is sure that he wanted to audition for Superstar K – he is too young and too inexperienced and she doesn’t want him to get hurt by anyone or anything. 

Seungyoon ignored the blues as much as he could and focused on making the golden-ness of mom shine again. 

The auditions and the stage and the practice and the people scared and excited him at the same time. If he thought being in a couple of guitar classes made the world too vibrant from all the sounds around him, it is nothing compared to an actual stage.

But he wasn’t scared anymore.

He lived with the colors for about a decade and a half and he had been playing with them via the strings on his guitar for so long, and he sometimes wished people can see what he sees – the weave upon weave of bright pink and turquoise when he hits the A keys a little harder, the violet blue that comes out whenever he changes from major notes and the layers of red that seeps into the already blindingly complex color storm when he starts to sing – he wishes others can experience how amazing these things are, but he can’t. So, Seungyoon just sings his heart out, hoping that even if it is not in the way of effervescent colors, he hopes that they can perceive his music in whatever way they can, and that it leaves them with the same content and engulfing feeling like it does to him. 

*

Entertainment industry is brutally red and overwhelmingly grey. He is used to assigning each person a color – of course, no one is a single color – they keep changing with moods and voices. But with every one that matters to him, they come with a dominant color to him – not something he chooses or even actually sees, rather it is something that he just feels, like the warm feeling of Mom’s yellow whenever she comes down to Seoul to cook him dinner, or the proudness in his chest that feels like green when he wrapped up his first scene for High Kick 3 – feeling like maybe he has made it after all. 

Everyone he met in the industry – from producers and staff to company CEOs and veteran singers/actors, though, always have this hues of red and tainted blue-ish grey to them. Even mom said that she can feel an air of consciousness and contradicting gloom around a lot of these people – one of the reasons why she doesn’t like accompanying Seungyoon to meetings. 

The only people with pure rich colors radiating off of them are other trainees although Seungyoon is starting to sense that their colors get darker and darker as days go by. It makes him kind of sad when he thinks about it.

*

The first trainee he met in YG is Jinwoo – he showed Seungyoon around the training building, told him how to sneak in snacks into the training room, and which trainers to please and be close to if you want a good spot in the evaluation videos. 

Jinwoo has been in shades of various blues ever since Seungyoon met him – bright ocean blue when he is feeling happy and his voice goes higher and higher, dark ink-stained blue when he is panting and out of breath from a training and barely standing, and blue mixed with red and purple when he sings with gritted teeth and shying eyes under the harsh scrutiny of judges at evaluations.

*

Taehyun came in after a couple of changes in the group, and at first, Seungyoon thinks he is too similar to Jinwoo – both exuding blue and purple gradients of colors, but he quickly learned that they are not similar at all. 

While Jinwoo’s blue is calm and grounding, Taehyun’s is the nebula – an intense dark purple - vibrant and radiating like there is too much contained inside and it is just buzzing to explode. When Taehyun sings, neck extended and eyes closed to hit that particular high note, sometimes, all Seungyoon can see is a galaxy of blue and purple coming out of the boy.

Taehyun didn’t talk to them – or anyone, really – much at first, but when they finally broke the awkwardness with a couple of soju bottles that could have gotten them in trouble for, he started being more comfortable with them –strings of bright periwinkle streaming out of him whenever he laughs freely and openly.

Seungyoon thinks it is his favorite shade out of Taehyun.

*

Seunghoon has always been confusing. 

When he is talking to them or just being around, he is surrounded by greenish smoke that makes Seungyoon feels like he is standing in a summer field. But when he starts rapping, eyes trained on the lyric sheet and hands all over the place, the green starts molding into yellow to blue to purple like it cannot find a place to settle. 

But sometimes, he is red and sometimes he is dark magenta despite no noticeable change in his outward appearance. Everyone thinks he is his usual goofy self but Seungyoon can sense the desperation and frustration from the overwhelming red that comes out of his mouth even when Seunghoon is telling a dumb joke. 

Seungyoon feels a little guilty about knowing these hidden modes of Seunghoon, but he cannot un-see what he has always been seeing. So, he resolutely pats on Seunghoon’s shoulders or gives him an uninvited hug whenever too much red starts to mix with Seunghoon’s green.

*

Seungyoon thought Minho would be red. 

Their team needs a rapper because obviously, they are in YG and Bigtone hyung said that someone from underground is joining them. Seungyoon didn’t join the rest in searching up old videos of Song Minho because he was a little busy with his solo songs preparation. But he imagined Minho to be someone red – forceful and daunting and overwhelmingly bright. 

Minho greeted him in a bright yellow cloud. It is different from mom’s golden yellow – instead of being grounding and warm, Minho’s is more vivid and heated – like a bright fire at a camp. 

Also, Minho is one of the few people Seungyoon knows that have a stable color on him – sure he changes like everyone else – he turns to a little darker saffron when his voice gets lower with his anger or one of his more aggressive rapping, and a brighter lemon-ish color when he is happily scheming with Seunghoon on the side, their yellow and green almost turning in a blue cloud around them. 

But, Minho has never strayed far from the yellow – persistent and bright. 

*

He and Taehyun are in the office, yet another probably sleepless night making beats and writing lyrics. Taehyun has been strumming absently on Seungyoon’s guitar – short strings of purple and yellow coming out from the vibrating guitar string – for the past 10 minutes and Seungyoon is so tired – he can’t remember the last time he had more than six hours of sleep and he just wants to curl up here and shut his eye from the colors for now. 

“You should take a nap.” Taehyun says, catching his eyes from the other side of the desk. “You’ve been yawning for like the past ten minutes.”

“Hmm..” Seungyoon hums uncommittedly and looks down at the notebook where he has just been scribbling little flowers and stars in the corner. “I think we should change the hook on this one.” He taps on the notebook with the end of his pen. “It’s too abrupt.”

“Really?” Taehyun asks. “I thought it was fine.”

“Just,” Seungyoon scratches his head and lets out a wide yawn. “Everything else is a nice smooth blue but the hook comes in and everything turns pink.”

Taehyun snorts. “You know, I’ll never understand what kind of music school you went to because who even talks about sounds in colors?”

Seungyoon grips the pen in his hand, and thinks what the hell. 

“I can see sounds.”

Taehyun blinks at him. “I think you really need that nap.”

“No, I am serious.” Seungyoon insists. “It’s called Chromesthesia – I can see the sounds in colors.”

He spells the word down on a piece of paper so that Taehyun can look it up on the net.

“So, you can’t like actually hear things?” Taehyun asks while reading on the first article the search pulls out. 

“No, I do hear things.” Seungyoon replies. “I don’t know how to describe it. Like, I can get both? I perceive both the colors and the sound and two of them makes up the whole sound experience for me.”

“That’s so weird.” Taehyun mutters. “But sort of cool. And also tripping me out.”

Seungyoon shrugs. “Just thought you should know because I always tend to think of sounds in color.”

“Does the rest know?” Taehyun asks, twirling a pen in his hand.

“I’ll tell them later.” 

“You don’t need to tell them if you don’t want to.” Taehyun says. 

“I know,” Seungyoon sighs. “It’s not that big a deal anyway. Just something weird about me.”

“You’ve always been a weirdo.” Taehyun laughs, and Seungyoon smiles at the bright purple that comes with Taehyun’s laugh. 

“You are purple, by the way.” Seungyoon says and Taehyun squints his eyes at him. 

“I am what?”

“Purple. I mean, your aura or whatever. Whenever you speaks or sings, I see purple. I mean, not all the times, but you know, you give me a purple feeling.”

“I give you a purple feeling?” Taehyun mumbles. “That’d make good lyrics. I think.”

Seungyoon laughs and stretches, joints popping painfully on his over-hunched shoulders. “I think I’m gonna take that nap now.”

“Ok,” Taehyun shrugs. “What color are you, by the way?”

Seungyoon stops at the question. He never really thought about it – for someone who is around colors every second of his life, he sure does not know what kind of color comes out from himself.

“I don’t know.” He admits truthfully. “I never notice.”

“You’ve heard yourself sing before.”

“Yeah, but,” Seungyoon shrugs. “You know how they say that people have difficulty recognizing their own voice? Maybe it’s something like that.” 

“Make sense.” Taehyun nods. “I mean, as much sense as it could for someone who sees sounds.”

Seungyoon snorts. “Get used to it.”

Taehyun pokes his tongue out at him and throws him the small blanket they keep around for unscheduled naps because the office’s central air-condition system tends to get unforgivingly cold at night.

“Wake me up in 10 minutes.” Seungyoon says and pulls the blanket fully over him.

“Yeah,” Taehyun nods distractedly, grabbing at Seungyoon’s notebook and reading over the lyrics he has been writing. “Sure.”

Seungyoon lets out a contented sigh and closes his eyes, the dancing colors in front of him slowly fading into the darkness.


End file.
